With Angels Singing

It’s always slightly disheartening when as a priest, you come to take a service and find that there are only one of two people – or occasionally, no one – there. Whenever that has happened, I tell myself that the angels and archangels were also there. That might sound like a flippant comment, but it’s exactly what the Book of Revelation tells us about angels - that we are part of a much bigger picture, in which we are never alone, and we are always accompanied by the angels and the saints.

That companionship is most evident when we worship - the Eucharistic Prayer contains a line where the priest says “we join with heaven” just before the whole congregation sings, “Holy, holy, holy” - those words coming from the vision Isaiah has of heaven where angels sing those words to one another. So when we sing those words, that’s not us just echoing words that once were sung at a point in history, that is us literally joining in with what the whole of heaven is singing at the same time as us. Tomorrow we celebrate the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, which is there to remind us that when we worship, we don’t do so alone, but we are joining in with all of heaven as they encourage us in singing God’s praises.